Mayor Rob Ford is not the only one who will miss Doug Holyday, his former deputy mayor, at City Hall. Everybody else will miss him, too.

Mr. Holyday won election to the Ontario legislature in a byelection on Thursday with 16,130 votes, compared with 14,513 votes for his opponent, fellow executive committee member Peter Milczyn. Mr. Holyday becomes the member of provincial parliament for Etobicoke-Lakeshore.

The move for Mr. Holyday comes after a long and storied career in municipal politics. Douglas Charles Holyday, born in 1942, had a career in insurance before winning election to Etobicoke city council in 1985. Elected mayor of Etobicoke in 1994, he served as the western suburb’s last mayor before the province amalgamated Etobicoke into the City of Toronto in 1998. Then Mr. Holyday won election as a Toronto councillor, where he has remained.

I will miss Mr. Holyday for his wardrobe and his demeanor. His normal attire is a suit, with a tie and a pocket square. (Apparently his wife, Franca, can take much of the credit for this.) He is a gentleman, the kind of guy who holds the door open for women and does not attack his political opponents personally. About the worst term he’s ever used on the floor of council is, “Holy mackarel.”

Mr. Holyday, who has three grandchildren, has been active with the Kewanis and Rotary clubs, and the Salvation Army. He loves to stop by the National Post office at City Hall and talk about his outings to the St. George’s Golf & Country Club in Etobicoke, of which he is a member, or discuss his efforts in the Etobicoke Old-Timers Hockey Club. He also sometimes discusses his (apparently lush) Etobicoke lawn, and how he and his son occasionally help one another out keeping their lawns mowed.

There is something comforting about a politician who worries about his lawn; privately-owned carpets of grass are a big deal in much of Toronto, though organic-milk-drinking downtown cyclists like me sometimes seem to forget it.

In a word, Mr. Holyday has class.

The deputy mayor worries about the bottom line, too. Mayor Ford’s big successes this term — signing deals with all of Toronto’s public service unions, without anyone going on strike, and privatizing garbage collection west of Yonge Street — bear the imprimatur of Mr. Holyday.

A few years ago, as a city councillor during the Miller years, Mr. Holyday hired municipal lawyer George Rust-D’Eye on principle, and took the city of Toronto to court. He sought an order that council broke municipal law when it reimbursed councillors’ legal fees for compliance audits. Mr. Holyday won the case, and picked up his own legal fees, to boot.

He has also stood up to protect industrial zoning in Etobicoke — against the march of condo towers — which is a far-sighted effort to protect our tax base. Commercial and industrial zoning brings in much higher rates of tax to municipal coffers than residential use.

Queen’s Park often feels like the place where people with personality go to die. But who knows, maybe Mr. Holyday can bring some life to the place. He will definitely raise the bar for the dress code, and fiscal responsibility, too.
National Post